Author: Sara Vincent

Good Habits

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It’s Monday morning.  Back to school, back to routine.  Cool, rainy mornings make the getting up hard.  Phone calls and text messages do their part to keep us off task.  We all struggle to settle in.

Slowly, slowly we all succumb to the schedule.  Well, all but one, who insists on marching to her own beat most of the time anyway.  The routine is good for us, even for the non-conforming child.  It gives us structure, order, stability.  Set activities, fixed times, moments when we know what happens next.

Just as the routine of school and work is good for our souls, so is the routine of weekly recording thanks.  Sometimes during the week, the listing is hard.  The gifts can be painful or the time can slip away too quickly and we forget to list with pen and paper.  But the routine is important because these everyday moments are the gifts and the things never to be forgotten or taken for granted.  This is the stuff of life and of greatness – laundry, dishes, school books, wiping tears, and sharing laughter.  These daily moments.  And for each one, I give thanks.

0834.  a good, normal week

0835.  sushi-making girls night

0836.  getting out of my comfort zone

0837.  ten miles

0838.  Pandora for iPad

0839.  unexpected goals reached

0840.  sore knees that make me slow down

0841.  these daily moments


Bookends

Two Weeks in Review

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I’m at my little workstation in the kitchen.  The house is quiet but for the laundry tumbling, tumbling, tumbling in the dryer up the stairs.  A candle is lit and coffee is near at hand.  I hope to steal a few moments of the present to record the past before husband and children pour through front door and end the silence with joyful noises.

This morning, and the past two weeks really, was defined by a ten mile run.  It was out there.  Waiting for me.  Intimidating me.  Ever present.  I was so happy when I got up this morning, knowing it would be behind me in a few hours.  I know, there’s something wrong with me.  😉

When my running partner decided to train for a half marathon, I knew it was only a matter of time before she passed me in running ability.  Today was that day.  The last two miles were brutal and she (cheerfully) coaxed me along.  I briefly considered throwing her into traffic.  😉 The proverb “If you want to go fast, go alone.  If you want to go far, go together.” has come to mind many times over the past year of running with friends.  Even alone, I am not fast.  But with these two partners, I have maintained a greater consistency and endurance than I would have had alone.  And, today, I would likely not have finished the ten running if Nikki hadn’t been there.

With that ten behind me, I feel lighter and freer.  🙂  Except for my knees, which feel like death.

The balance of the past two weeks have been school and activities and normal life.  Grace finally got to celebrate her tenth birthday last weekend with her friends.  Outdoorsy girl that she is, she wanted a camp out.  And camping out in Kansas in August (when her birthday was) sounds like a little taste of hell, so we told her she would have to wait for the weather to cool down.  And cool down it did!  I did not pack enough bedding and we spent the night snuggling together in a borrowed camper.  But the little girl voices still going strong at 2:30 in the morning assured me a wonderful time was being had and the life-long memories really were worth the non-existent sleep that night.

Opening gifts with friends

Someone knows this girl well

Out for a morning "hike"

I love it out here

I was simply praying that no one would fall in

Ellie - No other explanation needed

Grace and Friends

Have a beautiful Saturday, friends!  Enjoy the creation He has made and give Him glory for it!

~ Sara

Falling Behind

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I admit that I feel bad.  This is the second week in a row that Thursday and Friday have come and gone with no time to write.  The daily writing is an important exercise for me, so I feel like something is missing when it doesn’t happen.  This is all to say that I will post tomorrow and look back over the past two weeks and all the good gifts God is giving.

Thanks for your patience with my inconsistencies as I learn to balance all that God has given us.

~ Sara

Comfort

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and a preview of what’s been sitting on my camera….

Grace and her friends at her birthday camp out

The education of our faith is incomplete if we have yet to learn that God’s providence works through loss, that there is a ministry to us through failure and the fading of things, and that He gives the gift of emptiness.  It is, in fact, the material insecurities of life that cause our lives to be spiritually established.

One way or the other, we must all learn the difference between trusting in the gift and trusting in the Giver.  The gift may last for a season, but the Giver is the only eternal love.

Streams in the Desert, October 5

May your Wednesday be blessed and may you be aware of His good gifts.

Time and Balance – Figuring Out Where to Start

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It’s hard to know where to begin a lot of the time.  Whether it be with an organizing or cleaning project, home work, breaking or making a habit, or whatever else, we can spend a lot of time just thinking about what to do first.  Truth be told, beginning this series has been no different.  When I shared with the moms group, I wanted to save the most important points for last, to hold their attention (ideally) and to facilitate the memory of what I felt mattered most.  And also, thoughts and suggestions delivered in person are often received differently when facial expressions and verbal inflection can be used, than from a faceless, voiceless screen.  Here it seems we should start with what matters most, for if I spend weeks offering hints and tips, a reader may spend those weeks continuing to flounder when she could start out learning to grow and I will pray for God to speak to the readers, to impart the heart of the message and not all the human imperfections.

And so, we will start with what matters most – cultivating Christ.  Without His strength, grace, and peace, none of the rest of this works.  Without a relationship with Him, none of the rest of this matters.  We must first seek to grow in Christ, if we are to be fruitful in other areas.

Giving practical tips on how to organize your home or more efficiently manage your time, based on what gifts I’ve been given or things I’ve learned through the years, is simple enough.  You can take the tips or leave them.  But to come here and to attempt to tell you how to grow in Christ is a little different.  One’s relationship with her Savior is a much more personal, individual matter, and I am no expert in these things.  But I have walked sixteen years with Him, many of them stumbling and being carried, and He has been faithful to teach me every step of the way.  So perhaps, instead of telling you what to do per se, I can encourage you to press on, carry on, and follow hard.

“The reality of knowing Jesus comes as result of hidden prayer, and personal Bible study that is devotional and consistent in nature.  Christ becomes more real to those who persist in cultivating His presence.” Streams in the Desert.

Cultivating Christ starts out simply – daily time with Him and asking Him to reveal Himself to you, to be present in your life, and to give you a hunger for His Word.  Nothing could be more within His will than for us to seek a relationship with Him, and the Bible tells us that when we ask for something in His will, He will give it.  Faith often requires acting on things unseen, so we must keep stepping out, trusting Him to be there.  Even when we don’t feel it, pursue Him.

There are many helpful things I hope to share in the coming weeks of this series, but the most important thing you will do as a woman, wife, mother, friend, is cultivate your relationship with Christ.  This has to come at the cost of everything else.  Nothing is more important than this.

Would you like to know more about a relationship with Jesus Christ?  Click here.

Streams in the Desert has been a life changing devotional for me.  God has used it countless, countless times to water this barren soul.  Click here to order your own copy.

Next week we’ll talk about the elusive idea of slowing down.

For His Glory ~

~ Sara

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Worship

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“A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.  But God wills our good, and our good is to love Him.” ~  CS Lewis

The end of last week was wildly busy; the weekend intentionally slow.  The pictures of our adventures sit waiting, impatiently, on my camera.  Words will have to be enough for today, and even of those, only a few.

Today, like almost every Monday, I worship by listing just some of the countless blessings of the previous week.

0817.  broken lamp

0818.  “keep calm and carry on”

0819.  husband in the ditch, but safe

0820.  AAA

0821.  a found purse!!!

0822.  city parks employee

0823.  Grace.  Immeasurable grace.

0824.  spontaneous lunch with the hubs

0825.  good school days

0826.  municipal wrongs forgiven

0827.  spotting half a dozen deer on our morning run

0828.  a cleaner house

0829.  tenth birthday camping trips

0830. an hour and a half of sleep

0831.  a slow Saturday

0832.  church’s annual fall festival

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.

~ Psalm 19:14

A God in the Details

/ Sara Vincent / 4 Comments

Last Friday, I was angry.  I was angry about my purse.  I was angry about how life was going.  Our insurance was willing to cover the loss, but it wasn’t worth filing the claim with what it would do to our rates.  I appealed to the buyer’s protection with our credit card; they wouldn’t cover theft from a car.  I felt like everything was going wrong.  And I was mad.  I worked my way through that anger, enjoyed a relaxing drive and laughing with my husband, and then danced the night away with friends.  By Saturday, my soul was at rest.  I had reached a point of accepting where things were at in life and was “claiming” a drama-free week for our family.  And I still had hope for my purse and wallet.  In the back of my mind my only thought was, maybe none of these other avenues are working because God is going to give it back to me.

In spite of my “claim” for a drama-free week, Monday morning started with one of our favorite red glass lamps being shattered while the children built a fort on the couch.  One of those mother moments when I looked and thought, This is a really bad idea.  And then I also thought, No, Sara, let them do this.  Say yes. So I let them and went upstairs for a bit.  And then I heard the shattering thud and knew instantly what had happened.  😦  So, before lunchtime I had given up my hopes for drama-free this week.

Tuesday morning, Matt found himself in a ditch in his truck.  *sigh*  I laughed.  I couldn’t help myself.  He was fine, just terribly inconvenienced, and I couldn’t help but laugh.  So, so ridiculous it was.

So Tuesday afternoon when the city services truck stopped in front of my house I honestly wondered what the next thing would be.  I wondered if something had happened with our payment and now our water was being turned off.  It just seemed like the next ridiculous occurrence in this series of unfortunate events.

The men in the truck sat out there a bit, so I went on and forgot about them, until one of them came to my door.  “I’m looking for Sara,” he said.  “I’m she,” I responded.  “Did you lose a purse?” he asked.

I gasped and my eyes had to be as large as saucers and I replied, “Did you find my purse?!!?”

He led me out to his truck and there it was sitting in the back, dirty and crumpled, but completely intact with my wallet inside.  I hugged him.  I couldn’t help it.  I told him I had been praying for it and that my friends had and that he had made my day.

I asked him where he found it.  He said it was in a trash can at a local park, about two miles north of where my purse was stolen.  He said they find them there all the time.

The smell on the purse is indescribable.  I took it to a local cleaner’s yesterday because I couldn’t even bear to have it on my front porch.  As best I can tell, the thief only took my money.  Every last penny was gone out of my wallet, but nearly everything else was there.  A few random items are missing from my purse, but my guess is that they fell out in the trash can because it’s silly things like lip gloss and fingernail clippers.

I knew my money was gone as soon as the purse went missing.  All I asked of the Lord was that I could have the purse and wallet back.  I didn’t care about any of the rest of it. I have seen God in so many little details throughout my seventeen year walk with Him that I never doubted His ability to bring that purse back, if He was willing.  (And after all this, I’m also confident He can get the smell out of it!  🙂 )

Matt and I have been asking ourselves for weeks, but especially the past several days, Is this God?  Is this Satan?  What are we supposed to be learning? And those thoughts continued to roll through my head as I processed the excitement of the afternoon.  What was God saying by giving this back?  Had we done something right?  What was it?

As I drove along, my soul knew it wasn’t anything we had done.  It was just God.  He gave it back because He’s God and He can and He chose to.  It’s grace. Simply grace.  And really it’s His grace that leads us through the trials that bring us to our knees.  For if grace means undeserved gift, then the trials of life that make us more like His Son are surely also grace.  It’s all grace.  Every moment.  Every breath.

And I’m so thankful for His endlessly abundant grace and His concern for the details of this day-to-day life.  Oh, how deep is His love for us!

For His Glory ~

~ Sara

Time and Balance Tuesday

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In the past couple of weeks, I have had many friends ask me for notes from what I shared at our local mom’s group meeting on the topic of Time and Balance and Being Who God Created You To Be.

I have decided to do a short series on here, starting next Tuesday.  If it really takes off, maybe we’ll keep it going!  So, tell your friends and go ahead and subscribe by clicking the button on the right side of the page.  That way you’ll be sure not to miss anything!

I’m looking forward to seeing what God does with this!  Have terrific Tuesday, friends!

~ Sara

What Do You Do?

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Once again on Wednesday I rose early to run.  No inclement weather threatened this time.  We met, Nikki and I, at our usual place, parked our cars, and started out.  Four and a half sluggish miles later we returned to the parking lot, laughing and rejoicing that we had finished.  And then we saw it.

Nikki saw it first – the back window on my SUV shattered.  Glass all over ground, floor, Ellie’s car seat.  My purse gone.  My new purse, a “souvenir” from my trip to Chicago with Grace.  The purse, the wallet, all the contents…credit cards, driver’s license, who knows what else…and the cash for our groceries this week….gone.

What do you do when it feels like this is just another incident in a long series of major incidents?  What do you do when you feel like you’ve spent the summer facing unexpected expense after unexpected expense, and none of them small?  When it just seems to be one thing after another?

What do you do?  You remember that moth and rust destroy, that thieves break in and steal.  You cling to the promise that every good and perfect gift is from above….all things work together….He will provide….He is here….He is enough…He is faithful.

What do you do when children come, smiles hidden, eyes alight and hand you envelopes rattling with change, stuffed with monies saved and cards made?  You weep and you hug and you give thanks.  In this inconvenient, broken moment of canceling credit cards and replacing shattered windows, you find your own heart shattered at this love-gift from children, from a Savior.  For without this broken moment, their beautiful gift never could have been given.

And I give thanks….

0805.  broken window

0806.  stolen purse

0807.  a friend who prays with me and for me

0808.  generous, abundantly generous, children


0809.  granny oakley

0810.  drives in the country

0811. dancing

0812.  barn swings

0813.  laughing

0814.  perspective

0815.  Sunday school prayer time

0816.  someone who dances with me



Oh, sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord all the earth!  Sing to the Lord, bless His name; tell of His salvation from day to day.  Declare His glory among the nations, His marvelous works among all the peoples!  For great is the Lord and greatly to be praised; He is to be feared above all gods.

~ Psalm 96:1-4

Week In Review – So Happy It’s Friday

/ Sara Vincent / 1 Comment

Downer Warning:  It’s been a week, and I am just starting to really “feel” the events today.  This could be a very crabby post.  Feel free to flee now, or read on at your own risk.  😮

On Wednesday of this week, I had my SUV broken into and my purse stolen.  My brand new purse and wallet that I had only had for one month.  Exactly.one.month.  On a day that started out well and in the middle of what I hoped was going to be a drama-free week, everything was turned on its side.  I tried to do school with the girls, but they were clearly disturbed by what had happened and I was so distracted by phone calls to be made and trying to find somewhere to take my window-missing truck before it started to rain, we ended up only getting about half of our stuff done.  I spent most of the day numb and somewhat disoriented.  Thursday felt about the same.

Today I’m just mad.  I’m mad that my whole week got jacked up by someone’s selfishness.  I’m mad that everything cost just enough to be a giant nuisance, but probably not enough to make it worth submitting to insurance.  I’m mad that we haven’t even gotten the credit card bill for the dang purse yet and it’s already gone.  I’m mad that Matt had to take money out of savings so that I could go get groceries (because I was trying to be “good” and use cash and that was stolen).  I’m mad that I had to put groceries back today because I had to save money to go replace my driver’s license.  I’m mad that I have to make a bunch of phone calls this afternoon to change our auto-pay information from our checking account, because we had to open a new one.  I’m mad  that when I went to order new checks today, I got all the way through and realized I had no way to pay for them online.  I’m mad at the inconvenience it is causing Matt to be without any of his business credit cards for the next couple of weeks.

None of this is a big deal.  It really isn’t.  But it’s been an entire summer of this.kind.of.stuff.  Unplanned, unbudgeted inconveniences.  Matt and I laid in bed on Wednesday night and began to count up how many unexpected expenses we’ve had just this summer:

  • my truck window
  • my purse, wallet, and cash
  • his truck totaled
  • flat tire on his truck led to getting four new tires
  • two weed whips gone
  • one lawn mower dead
  • tool theft
  • roof repairs
  • broken rear hatch handle on my truck
  • broken antenna (not a cheap fix)
  • both air conditioning units at the house needing repairs
  • two speeding tickets

There were a few more, but they’re not coming to mind.  Needless to say, we’re worn down by the financial blood bath that this summer has been.

On the other hand, God has been more than generous with us this year.  It’s been a good year for the business and He’s been prompting Matt to work hard on saving money.  It’s just that Matt thought he was saving for the future, not for right now to just replace all our broken or stolen stuff.

I know God hasn’t changed.  I know He is still good.  I cling to His faithfulness and His promise to carry me.  There is still much to be thankful for and at least one beautiful story has come out of this, which I will share on Monday.  But today I feel a little like I’m going insane.  I told a friend today that I’m not even sure if this is Biblical, but I’m just going to go ahead and start “claiming” a drama-free week next week.  In Jesus name.

Now that I have written all of this down and looked back through it, I’m actually laughing.  It’s all just so ridiculous.  I wonder what could be next?!?!

Have a fabulous weekend, friends.  I’m sure going to try to here!

Only By His Grace ~

~ Sara